Silver & Credit Money in Ancient Athens | History of Money

Поделиться
HTML-код
  • Опубликовано: 21 дек 2024

Комментарии • 113

  • @rejvaik00
    @rejvaik00 3 года назад +72

    I swear Money and Macro is just a complete improvement over the economics explained RUclips channel

    • @inferno0020
      @inferno0020 2 года назад

      Money and Macro is the reason why intellectuals must exist. We have too many fearmongers and conspiracists that disinform us on the economy and mislead people to buy into hoaxes and paranoia.

    • @bunnybunnyloaf
      @bunnybunnyloaf Год назад +5

      Economics Explained feels a bit like ECON 101 and Money and Macro feels a little more like digging into the current research data and controversy. I can see each one serving the needs of a different audience

    • @rejvaik00
      @rejvaik00 Год назад +1

      @@bunnybunnyloaf I used to think that until Economics Explained woefully missed the mark by a mile on his video about wealth inequality and saying that the Netherlands, collectively known as the Dutch, was the most divided nation in regards to wealth inequality
      And luckily this guy here running the Money and Macro channel, himself of dutch ancestry and a professor of economics in S. Africa, made a very well done video discussing the issues regarding wealth inequality across nations and how EE needed to go back and look at his research a little bit more

    • @Seth9809
      @Seth9809 Год назад

      Absolutely.

    • @anubisgod23
      @anubisgod23 Год назад

      Theyre not the same type of channel tho....

  • @ΑντώνιοςΕυάγγελοςΒασιλειάδης

    A minor correction. In 4:35 you say "Turkish cities", the proper term is Anatolian since turks didn't exist in anatolia at this time period.

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +36

      fair enough :)

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 3 года назад +3

      @@MoneyMacro A 1400 year mistake lol, well technically 1700 years, since only in 1300's AD did the Turks reach the coast of Anatolia. And Athens was already an economic superpower in -400 BC.

    • @someonesomeone529
      @someonesomeone529 2 года назад +2

      @@celdur4635 what he said is an obvious mistake but what you say doesn't make sense also, since the beginning of Ottoman Empire is 1299 and Seljuk's were in Anatolia long before that.

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 2 года назад

      @@someonesomeone529 But not on the coast.

    • @someonesomeone529
      @someonesomeone529 2 года назад

      @@celdur4635 that is also not true because there were some time periods when Seljuks ruled the "coasts", also we are talking about Anatolia, not the "coast", I don't know which coast you mean but anyway.

  • @MoneyMacro
    @MoneyMacro  4 года назад +58

    My main source for this video was the book "Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible
    ", by William N. Goetzmann
    Specifically the chapter on Athenian Finance, and its monetary revolution. Great book, I can recommend it!!

    • @jiecut
      @jiecut 3 года назад +1

      Interesting. I enjoyed reading Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money" which is similar.

    • @brettmatthews8061
      @brettmatthews8061 3 года назад

      Thanks - I'm ordering the book. The Sumerians were trading into Anatolia thousands of years before the rise of Athens, so they must have used some sort of proto-monetary system for trade. This is a twist in the tale that you haven't told ...

  • @Arhiroukounas
    @Arhiroukounas 3 года назад +41

    Ancient Athenians understood very well the importance of money velocity,so there was the custom of θεωρικά(theorikA):usually a rich person would cover the cost of a theatrical play or the maintance of a warship or something else.This is how they managed to keep the money flowing from the top back to the general economy.
    Aristotle considerd money hoarding(οβολοστατική-ovolostatikI) as very bad for the economy and social stability.

    • @effexon
      @effexon 3 года назад +2

      ah, looks even today we have things to learn from ancient times. Sounds very reasonable ideas and applications.

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 3 года назад +5

      @@effexon Learn what, the rich and super rich of today's world don't hoard money, they have it invested in their and other's businesses.

    • @effexon
      @effexon 3 года назад +1

      @@celdur4635 this smart use of public jobs as both equality measure/social welfare AND money distribution/inflation mechanism... afaik all public jobs in west are cushy "for life", which aint best system.. breeds corruption and ineffectiveness and stagnation in culture there + costs via pensions and such, as politicians pamper these people over everyone else.... NJ story like this

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 3 года назад

      @@effexon
      Its the socialists that push for "public jobs" its not necessary today as it was for ancient Athens. They just do it to get cushy for life jobs as you put it.

  • @alexeysaphonov232
    @alexeysaphonov232 3 года назад +32

    Trapeza - a table (board), which is not so far from Italian "banco" (bench/board) used for the same purpose.

  • @LibertyScholar
    @LibertyScholar 2 года назад +15

    As a fan of Assassin's Creed and your channel, I love how you utilized the "education mode" of this game. I always appreciated that Ubisoft put this mode in their games and it's nice to see it in use on something like this.

  • @Reis59452
    @Reis59452 3 года назад +11

    I've just discovered your channel this week and I really liked your explanations! Very good video btw...

  • @ЯрославБучило
    @ЯрославБучило 3 года назад +21

    Nice video! As being born in Athens I will correct your pronunciation of the word "trapeza". In Greek the right way to say is "trApeza", not "trapEza". And the modern greek word of "table" is "trapEzi". Maybe it truly comes from those times where banking business was done on the table.

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +18

      This is a happy coincidence. I was just having dinner with a Greek national. I read him your comment and he helped me practice to correctly pronounce trApeza :)

    • @ЯрославБучило
      @ЯрославБучило 3 года назад +3

      @@MoneyMacro haha

  • @AP-yx1mm
    @AP-yx1mm 3 года назад +9

    10:45 The italian word for Bank, "banca", or originally "banco" means also "desk". Now I don't know who copied whom, but just wanted to point out this.

    • @TheEvertw
      @TheEvertw 3 года назад +5

      Knowing the Athenian system predated the rise of Rome by centuries, my bet is on the Athenians introducing the concept.

    • @rickjensen2717
      @rickjensen2717 3 месяца назад

      From Old High German 'Bank' meaning bench or counter.

  • @IllIl
    @IllIl 10 месяцев назад

    Absolutely fascinating man. Had this video on the backlog for a long while, so glad I finally got around to watching it! Very cool background footage as well, really brings the narrative to life rather than just some old ruins hehe.

  • @jhutt8002
    @jhutt8002 3 года назад +6

    Wasn't Lydians, in Anatolia actually first who made coin from electrum? Where other Greek cities adapted it.

    • @JB-qg2uc
      @JB-qg2uc 3 года назад

      This.

    • @Gumardee_coins_and_banknotes
      @Gumardee_coins_and_banknotes 2 года назад

      The Lydian coin wee not widely used outside of Lydia, Miletus, did copy the coins with a single lion, but it was Aegina that had the first trade coins around 550 BC.

    • @SeeJayCampbell
      @SeeJayCampbell 10 месяцев назад

      Yes, he didn’t directly say the Athenians invented coins but it could easily be implied. The Lydians also used silver coins before the Athenians too.

  • @nailil5722
    @nailil5722 Год назад

    one of your best series, please do more videos on the history of economics and finance

  • @Xergecuz
    @Xergecuz 3 года назад +9

    The $ is not the dollar sign, it's the mexican peso sign, but it was so popular that ended up being used by a lot of countries in Latin America and the US. It was a sign that was minted into the 8 reales coin that were also silver, minted in Mexico.

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 3 года назад +1

      Not only mexico it was the coin of the Spanish Empire, also minted in Lima and other places.

    • @Seth9809
      @Seth9809 2 года назад

      Isn't that the symbol of the "Piece of Eight"?
      The term "Dollar" comes from the Spanish, and the English Colonies used Spanish coins as it was borderline illegal for British pounds to leave Britain.

    • @dr.wahnsinn9913
      @dr.wahnsinn9913 2 года назад

      @@Seth9809 No Dollar is a variation of the low german word Daler, (in modern German Taler), but it was used for these coins.

    • @Seth9809
      @Seth9809 2 года назад

      @@dr.wahnsinn9913 I was more referring to this.
      "Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the real, a Spanish silver coin, was the currency of reference for world trade. The English in the American colonies called it the 'Spanish dollar' and ended by adopting it as their own."

  • @takisharalabidis611
    @takisharalabidis611 3 года назад +15

    Thank you for a very interesting presentation. It might be worth noting here that the drachma was probably the longest used currency in history. I think it started life in the archaic period and was withdrawn from circulation when Greece adopted the euro (2001).
    As you very rightly mentioned, grain was coming from Asia Minor (not Turkey, at that time period) but also from Egypt, Sicily and other locations. Grain was also coming from within Greece itself. Evia is the second-largest Greek island. It is near Athens and it was a major producer of grain. Evia was a vital source of food for Athens and controlling it was of major strategic importance.
    But grain was by no means the only trade, although it was of vital importance. Indeed, many other goods were shipped around the Med, to the great advantage of the city’s finances and thus power and influence. Before Athens, the Minoans and others did the same.

    • @FrancisBehnen
      @FrancisBehnen 3 года назад

      No en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_drachma?wprov=sfla1

    • @FrancisBehnen
      @FrancisBehnen 3 года назад

      Greece had the phoenix before the modern drachma

  • @cykkm
    @cykkm Год назад

    Tangential to the topic of the video, is the coin at 5:17 clipped? I think so. Look at the straight edge right above the owl's head on the reverse, right photo, and above the mohawk-like plume (which was more like a stiff brush than a plume) on the guy's helmet on the obverse, left. Looks like the clipping strike was done with a chisel from the obverse side: the edge is slightly rounded there, while on the reverse side there is a little relief protrusion, like a little border along this straight line. FWIW, this is an Attic tetradrachm, which was being minted in Athens from about 450 to 400 BC.
    That was a common problem with ancient coinage; clipped coins are far from being high-value collectibles for being clipped alone. :) In hindsight, just like the stirrups for horse riding, the collar for striking coins, a piece of sheet metal with a round hole at the very basic level, which makes them nice and round, was a very simple but very late invention. It's always surprising, in retrospect, how very complex, nearly industrialised societies missed such at the first sight obvious inventions.
    It's funny that the American penny coin ($0.01) costs today nearly five times in raw materials. A law has been adopted making it a crime to remelt them, and there is always a story behind any prohibition. :) I don't think they're still minted.

  • @celdur4635
    @celdur4635 3 года назад +1

    This is why Athens could recover so quickly after military and demographic disasters. Also recent research suggest grain was able to be provided by the local plain in Attica, so Athens wasn't so dependent on imports as previously thought. That would suggest those grain imports were mostly for trade to the wider world.

  • @danieltemelkovski9828
    @danieltemelkovski9828 3 года назад +2

    2:40 Weighed, not weighted. If you want to determine how heavy something is, you weigh it. To weight something means to attach a weight to it, to deliberately make it heavier.

    • @zeenkosis
      @zeenkosis Год назад +1

      Second language speaker things

  • @wargriffin5
    @wargriffin5 3 года назад +2

    Any chance of a review of the Ancient Carthaginian or Massilian economies? I know the answer is probably "Barter," but still, they were major regional economies at the same time as ancient Athens and Rome.

    • @celdur4635
      @celdur4635 3 года назад +1

      Carthage probably had a similar system to Athens since they shared the same time period and were massive traders.

  • @danieltemelkovski9828
    @danieltemelkovski9828 3 года назад +1

    7:38 As an idea for a future video, how about discussing the 19th century experience of western economies, characterized by dramatic output growth and periods of significant price deflation? The inability of the supply of metallic currency to keep pace with output growth doesn't seem to have led to the volatile prices you say are a necessary consequence in this video. (However "volatile" prices may have been in this period, to insist on the point seems self-defeating, considering that this volatility is dwarfed by post-WW2 inflationary episodes, when money supply could expand virtually without limit.)

    • @whatsupbudbud
      @whatsupbudbud 3 года назад

      Could it be that the governments enforced capital controls, i.e. limited food and other prices by law? Just a thought.

    • @danieltemelkovski9828
      @danieltemelkovski9828 3 года назад

      @@whatsupbudbud I don't think so. While capital and price controls were not completely unknown in the 19th century, they were definitely not a feature of western economies in this period.

    • @whatsupbudbud
      @whatsupbudbud 3 года назад

      @@danieltemelkovski9828 Can't say I am the wiser but capital controls have been used as far back as the Roman empire, plus they make sense for a government to be used when they employ monetary inflation practices. Could you give an example of a particular nation of the period where the effects you mentioned (output growth & deflation of prices) could be observed?

  • @Antowan
    @Antowan 3 года назад +39

    Nice use of assassin creed odyssey footage

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +3

      Thanks!!

    • @apricotcomputers3943
      @apricotcomputers3943 3 года назад

      yeah, really good way of subliminal advertising.

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +3

      @@apricotcomputers3943 haha I wish they paid me for it though...

  • @TheWonkyDonkey
    @TheWonkyDonkey 2 года назад +1

    It seems to me that the reason that gold, silver, and grain were a good basis for currencies is that all of them are proxies for productive capacity. Thus, they had the nice feature of expanding and contracting with economic activity AND innovations. I think a modern day equivalent would be energy production. What do you think? Would a new currency based on energy production be feasible?

    • @richdobbs6595
      @richdobbs6595 2 года назад

      The problem with energy is that it especially with interruptable solar and wind, it varies by time of day. It is expensive to store. Do you see large stockpiles of oil? And its value is highly dependent on the need for it at that moment. If it would start to be a feasible to use it as basis for currency, then you would start to see large stockpiles of mined coal and refined aluminum. I think that with today's economics, energy does not have any particular likely role as a basis for a new monetary system.

    • @dr.wahnsinn9913
      @dr.wahnsinn9913 2 года назад

      @@richdobbs6595 To storage Oil is the easy part, look for example at the strategic reserves. But with electric energy its nearly impossible to store a reasonable amount.

  • @georgeiv6925
    @georgeiv6925 2 года назад +1

    The athenian silver tetradrachm ( 4 drachmai) was the dollar of the med. 14.17 gramms of silver. With the help of Alexander these coin standard weights conquered the east , which had the Babylonian silver standard. Drachma had such an influence for a standard and trustworthy coin that a lot of Arab countries had and still have Dirham as the name of their currency. A name which originates from drachma.

  • @zahidulislam2068
    @zahidulislam2068 2 года назад

    Very well done! Please keep it up.

  • @whatsupbudbud
    @whatsupbudbud 3 года назад

    Very well presented, thanks for sharing.

  • @Mr.Nichan
    @Mr.Nichan 2 года назад +1

    For some reason I thought I remembered from high school history class that the Achaemenid Persians invented coins. That _is_ around the same time and place, I notice.
    EDIT: I think this must have something to do with the Achaemenid empire just being big, so it was a big deal when it started minting coins under Cyrus the Great. Wikipedia says this was after Cyrus took over Lydia (on the Aegean coast of Anatolia) and that Herodotus credits Lydia with being the first he knew of to mint coins, and Wikipedia agrees that the earliest coins are from Anatolia, although Wikipedia first mentions that China started minting coins centuries earlier.

  • @MultiSciGeek
    @MultiSciGeek 3 года назад +1

    This is fascinating!

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +1

      Thanks! I thought so as well :)

  • @PetarEconomics
    @PetarEconomics 2 года назад

    This was fun to listen to!

  • @robervaldo4633
    @robervaldo4633 3 года назад +1

    this is amazing, thanks

  • @GhostOnTheHalfShell
    @GhostOnTheHalfShell 3 года назад

    How about something regarding of Bractaeten or Wörgl and their history.

  • @ArabicLearning-MahmoudGa3far
    @ArabicLearning-MahmoudGa3far Год назад

    Thank you👍🏽

  • @bertnijhof5413
    @bertnijhof5413 3 года назад +1

    It is more the Euro of the Ancient Mediterranean, since the Euro is valid in the same region of those ancient civilizations of Cyprus; Greece and Italy.

  • @Mr.Nichan
    @Mr.Nichan 2 года назад

    4:30 "in the Turkish cities where most grain came from"
    You probably should have said "Anatolian", since the word "Turkish" is strongly associated with Turkic peoples, who would not in habit modern day Turkey (Anatolia/Asia Minor) in large quantities until about the 11th century CE.

  • @jaundice27
    @jaundice27 3 года назад +1

    Good video

  • @KevinCarney42
    @KevinCarney42 3 года назад +1

    Wow! You are gold mine (pun intended). Great video. Great channel.

  • @enderan27
    @enderan27 3 года назад +2

    The $ is the symbol of peso not Dollar. By Peso y mean the Spanish colonial peso symbol. The dollar copy it with a double vertical line. The peso became unused in Spain but stay in several ex colonies. The $ is one of the Hercules columns shown in the Spanish flag. The symbol was copied in the dollar because at the beginning of the USA they were closed to imitate the currency and coinence system and almost called American Peso instead of dollar

  • @philipberthiaume2314
    @philipberthiaume2314 Год назад

    Very interesting...

  • @sahhaf1234
    @sahhaf1234 2 года назад

    a few minor corrections:
    money is first discovered by lydians, not by athenians..
    grain mainly came to athens from today's crimea and ukraine, not from "turkish cities"..
    great video, none the less.. if you can also make a video on the temple economies of ancient near east, it will be greater still..

  • @deancrout874
    @deancrout874 3 года назад

    Great content

  • @TheEvertw
    @TheEvertw 3 года назад

    Very interesting!

  • @richdobbs6595
    @richdobbs6595 2 года назад

    Call me dubious. The practice of weighing things is a well established and not easily defrauded practice. OTOH, it is much more challenging to guarantee the purity of silver in coins. By mixing in lead with other metals, it is possible to dramatically change the silver content while not changing the specific gravity of coins. If you look at the vast rounds of inflation caused by changing the silver content of coins as well as the petty thievery of clipping coins, I really doubt that there was much advantage in coinage in avoiding the necessity to weigh coins. More so in guaranteeing some level of purity in the minted coins.

  • @mikkelnpetersen
    @mikkelnpetersen Год назад

    Anyone who says money is evil, dosen't understand human history or economics in general.

  • @Xotics.
    @Xotics. 3 года назад +1

    Blessed by Father Jupiter!

  • @mbrp5107
    @mbrp5107 3 года назад

    Why did they charge so high interest back then?

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад

      Good question. One reason I think is that these voyages were insanely risky ... so big risk premium.

    • @mbrp5107
      @mbrp5107 3 года назад

      I didn't see whether the interest rate is compound or flat in the video. If the flat interest rate was used in that era, I think it is reasonable to charge 12% per year for the saving account. Seems easier to calculate in the time when there was no calculator.

  • @MrClockw3rk
    @MrClockw3rk 3 года назад +1

    Ok gamer I see you

  • @dikkekater
    @dikkekater 3 года назад

    Dit is serieus interessant

  • @Ffourteen
    @Ffourteen Год назад

    The video refers to "Turkish Cities" as the source of Athens's grain. I understand that you're trying to simplify things and just referring to the region as Turkey. But it is important to remember that we are talking about twenty-five hundred years ago and there were no Turks yet. Those cities were colonies that the Greeks built in what they called Asia, specifically I think they were populated by the Ionian ethnic group of Greeks. Also you refer to the Parthenon being on mount Acropolis, acropolis just refers to the tallest hill in a city, acro for hill and polis for city. So most cities in Greece had an acropolis where they built their most important temples, because the altitude put them closer to Mount Olympus. It isn't a mountain and doesn't have specific name, just a title, the acropolis of Athens.

  • @behrensf84
    @behrensf84 3 года назад

    Less than 10k views for this video? maybe this video needs a better title for the You Tube algorithm gods.

  • @onafets38
    @onafets38 3 года назад

    I guess that put a not very rich Athenian in charge for an expedition would have made fraud more difficult..

    • @onafets38
      @onafets38 3 года назад

      for the cheater it would have been more difficult to hide the wealth obtained, to obtain the complicity of the crew (in case of survivors), to stop abroad and be safe..

  • @moneymatt9880
    @moneymatt9880 3 года назад

    now we have people taking credit and the citizens paying for that sunk ship.

  • @mpireoutdoors5274
    @mpireoutdoors5274 3 года назад +1

    Just fucking great.

  • @the1windwaker
    @the1windwaker 3 года назад +1

    Same owl is hidden in the dollar

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад

      Is it!? Very interesting I will check that out

    • @the1windwaker
      @the1windwaker 3 года назад

      @@MoneyMacro upper right corner on front in what looks like webbing. Some need a magnifying glass. Look in the "webbing" on the front of the dollar

    • @the1windwaker
      @the1windwaker 3 года назад

      @@MoneyMacro that owl has a long history. It's a deep rabbit hole but then again 'coincidence' theories run deep these days lol

  • @52darcey
    @52darcey 3 года назад

    Great content but what’s going on with your voice? You have this rhythmic electronic tone thing going on that makes you sound like some AI programme - super distracting!
    I’ve never noticed this in your other vids - some technical glitch !?

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  3 года назад +2

      I made two mistakes here... First, placing the microphone too far away from myself so that it picked up a lot of reverb. Second, talking too slowly ... I tried to improve both after this video.

  • @calvinduke4810
    @calvinduke4810 3 года назад

    Assassin's Creed Odyssey sent me here

  • @mat3714
    @mat3714 3 года назад

    So..... who's up for some knowledge, while bashing people playing AC odyssey?

  • @Emilthehun
    @Emilthehun 2 года назад

    So freeloaders been with us for thousands of years 😂

  • @tetrusadima
    @tetrusadima 4 года назад +1

    You need a better microphone.

    • @MoneyMacro
      @MoneyMacro  4 года назад +2

      I think it's the placement. I've bought an arm to bring it into a better position. Let me know if that helped in the next video.

    • @tetrusadima
      @tetrusadima 4 года назад

      @@MoneyMacro also work on your diction.

  • @klytouch7515
    @klytouch7515 3 года назад

    You mean US dollars of the ancient world..😁

  • @NewDawnReaper
    @NewDawnReaper Год назад

    Turkish cities??? Lol

  • @MyDreamside
    @MyDreamside Год назад

    they were no Turks in 4 century bc, they were Greek cities. It would be interesting to make a video about ECB and how money circulates through the system , who profits and how monetary policiess distribute wealth, how negative interests worked in Japan and in euro